3 B2B Facebook Ad Secrets They Don’t Want You To Know

All too often, B2B advertisers wreck their brains, time, and budgets on abysmal Facebook ad conversions. After a bit of research, I discovered a plethora of opportunities worth sharing, that may turn your Facebook frown upside down :p

Facebook sucks for B2B! Facebook is DEAD! Advertising here is a complete waste of money!

WRONG! Unfortunately, the only thing constant in your failed Facebook ads is YOU, the advertiser… but that’s ok.

It’s true, the kids no longer use Facebook. Especially considering SnapChat’s recent ongoing domination, it is easy to become discouraged in a social media ghost town. But let us not forget, the measure of popularity or platform viability for B2B doesn’t always entirely follow the trends of pop culture. B2B users, which are typically not teenagers, are running rampant on Facebook, leaving advertisers with huge opportunities to win big, with the right approach.

If you’ve tried everything and still no results, here’s an idea: get a hacker’s opinion!

Jerry Banfield, the hacker that motivated this blog entry, is inspirational causing me to re-think my approach, which up until this point, generated nil results.

Top 3 B2B Facebook advertising secrets they don’t want you to know:

1. Social Proof

One of the best attributes of Facebook is the fact that it’s on a social media platform, meaning something as theoretically insignificant as “social proof” actually holds weight in the eyes of viewers, and is key in spinning those viewers into loyal followers, and eventual customers!

An effectively run Like campaign could yield your brand some very helpful social proof that can then be leveraged into conversions. But how?

First, run a Like campaign. But not just any Like campaign, a really effective one. In this campaign, the only metric for effectiveness is, well, likes. So without taking much time, wipe away all your beautiful and meticulously creative multi-layered text-over-image PSDs, and never look back at those for this leg of your advertising strategy because you won’t need them. Now simply consider what people actually like.

All you need is a free stock image, some extremely simple copy, and a small budget.

The best news about this strategy is it doesn’t require a whole lot of time and money to determine which direction you’ll need to optimize. After you’ve created your campaign, create another one using the same principles for A/B testing, and run them both for only 48-72 hours. That’s it!

When picking your audience, don’t even waste time tediously dissecting criteria, perfecting the filters to hone in on your target audience. Remember, this is for Likes and Likes ONLY, so share it with as much of the world as possible, setting a minimal budget for testing, for example, $20 budget for both ads.

Here’s what Jerry’s Like campaign looked like, and almost immediately you can see why it was so widely successful. Since the copy is blurred and hard to see, I’ll tell you what it says, “Like to spread the feeling?”

If you’re still questioning the value of social proof, just try to think back to the last time you looked at someone’s profile – on any platform – and didn’t take a quick glance up at the page followers, or likes.

Waiting…

For the same reason, you may not have an answer to that question is the very reason why silly old page likes mean so much.

It is the single-most relied upon validator we have to go by to determine whether or not we spend any time on a page or profile. In fact, nobody even truly cares about who is actually liking your page or following your brand either. If out of 10,000-page likes, 85% are from South Africa, yet your business is in Southern California, or Maine nor pertains to a South African market, so what?! It simply doesn’t matter. This is about likes and likes only.

The takeaway here is simple: if you have no likes, then what is supposed to motivate a complete stranger’s interest in your brand’s page?

2. Email retargeting strategy

If using Mail Chimp, Constant Contact, or any other enterprise emailing software, then you’re probably already doing email retargeting within your email list segments, but what about on FaceBook?

These ads should make up the bulk of your Facebook advertising budget, as these work towards the sole objective of sales conversions.

Since you know the audience has already expressed interest in your product or service, it may be a good idea to incorporate your white paper and newsletter signups through ads like these as well.

There’s no question that email still reigns supreme among top performing conversion channels, so make sure you use it to your brand’s advantage at every opportunity. Get the most our of your email marketing.

3. The value of entertainment

Since entertainment is in the eye of the beholder, this one can be a little tricky. First of all, you want to consider your brand integrity. You don’t want to confuse your value proposition with inane content that doesn’t exactly draw in an audience that will never buy your product or service… right?

Though this may seem like common knowledge or the conservative and responsible approach, it can cause your brand to miss out on a bunch of huge opportunities to cash in on popular content that draws so many people in, that you can count on a few of them actually being within your target audience.

The theory here is: Attract more people top of the funnel, which then attracts more qualified Middle funnel prospects, which inherently converts more sales.

Jerry happens to be an online gamer who gets to test games before their respective release dates. He shares his live gaming experience via Youtube, which happens to be extremely entertaining content to a large market of global gamers.

Jerry also promotes and sells his marketing courses online. He advertises his business over FaceBook as well, that’s how he feeds his family.

He runs both sides of his content advertising campaigns simultaneously which drive insane amounts of traffic to his FaceBook page, website, or signup landers.

With a better sense of audience interests and brand direction, it becomes less challenging to fit some content under the entertainment umbrella, without sacrificing too much brand integrity.

Videos are at the top of the web/social media performance food chain, and live video reigns as king of the jungle. Resharing a popular story that your audience can relate to is another great way to build engagement. The trick in the reshare is to originate the share from the direct source (instead of from your friend’s page in your timeline). In addition to a video and reshares, there are many viable and popular formats to convey brand experience and deliver on value proposition i.e. funny, informational, animated, listicle, inspirational quotes, and more.

Lastly, advertising campaigns don’t have to cost an arm a leg. Short-term A/B tests can be an advertiser’s best friend, offering low cost paid engagement, deeper (than expected) audience insights, and high return of low-cost impressions.

It doesn’t have to look like you’ve hired Steven Spielberg in order for people to like and share your videos.

Stay hungry and curious for results, have fun, and never lose your creativity! Good luck advertisers;p